What Is RescueTime?

RescueTime is a time direction &amp; Productivity software company founded in 2008. The RescueTime app runs in the background of your apparatus monitoring, measuring and categorizing your own activity.

RescueTime is a free app with a premium upgrade That enables attributes and more specific reporting like time inputsignal. It delivers a reporting dash with your data diced sliced and sorted into useful graphs that will assist you manage your time.

RescueTime requires the tracking of time So you truly track your time so that and makes it automatic and painless .

Nevertheless, there are dozens and dozens of Improvement &amp; time management tools on the Internet. What are the pros &amp; cons of RescueTime? Here’s what I’ve noticed through the years.

Disclosure — I get referral fees from firms Mentioned on this site. Any info and/or opinions are all based on my expertise as a paying customer or adviser to a client. Timesheet Work Time Tracker

Rescuing Your Period

RescumeTime is a productivity tool at the, to reiterate Sense that it helps your abilities improve. It collects data about the apps and sites you use, and then generates reports based on that information.

To Begin, you set up a and create an account Desktop app in your personal computer (s) and a cell app on Android apparatus ) There’s no iOS program because the operating system prevents RescueTime from amassing the information it needs to carry out its purpose. Those programs quietly and invisibly track which apps you use and which websites you visit, as well as the amount of time you spend on them.

The tough nut to crack is how to make sense of all that information. To get the best results, you must customize your account from the RescueTime site and inform the program more about what you believe productive versus unproductive activity. The further you fine-tune it to your specific conditions, the greater your results. For example, someone who operates in the finances industry may classify reading financial news on web sites such as MarketWatch and FT.com as a productivity task, whereas for me, that is an unproductive use of time.

You can categorize site and every program on a 5-point Scale of quite productive, productive, neutral, dependable, and very unproductive. You can also categorize activity into work categorizes. By way of example, I record Google Docs as very productive, and I categorized it as Writing, which will be a subcategory of Design and Composition. Looking at Redfin.com is quite distracting when I’m trying to work, and I have categorized it .

From the desktop program, there is a simple set of controls That allows you to pause RescueTime for 15 minutes, one hour, or until tomorrow, providing you easy access to shifting the app off for days or breaks when you wrap up early.

Privacy

When faced with RescueTime’s proposal –We’ll track Everything you do and provide you insights about your customs! –some people might, justifiably, worry about their privacy and the safety of information in their hardware. If you use sensitive information on the internet or store sensitive information on your computers and mobile devices, you’ll want to browse RescueTime’s privacy and safety statements carefully.

For everyone else, RescueTime’s privacy policy Contains a summary at the very top, only a few condensed lines which are worth studying.

If your concerns are more relaxed and you simply don’t Want RescueTime monitoring you on the weekend, so you have control over the days and times the app monitors your behaviour. You can easily set it to only watch your action from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, or whatever program suits you.

Reports

I have used RescueTime for decades, and that I don’t check my Every day, productivity reports. I like to let the service run in the background so that when I do want to get a better image of how I’ve been spending my own time, a fantastic quantity of information is awaiting me.

While I do go through the reports, however, they’re Magnificent. I love the variety, providing you get numerous methods of understanding your productivity and customs, from bar graphs and pie charts that reveal lump sums of activity, to line items of software you used.

One simple but effective piece of information RescueTime Supplies is an analysis of when during the daytime you are inclined to be the most successful. I wasn’t surprised to see that my brain peaks in the morning and slacks off after 2:00 p.m., as that fits fairly well with everything I know about my habits. If you’ve never analyzed your productivity, nevertheless, that might be a beneficial revelation for you, one that might help you schedule your times more productively.

The longer you use RescueTime Premium, the more applicable the Data becomesbecause you can view your statistics daily, week, month, or year. And as you might expect, it is possible to toggle which times and days RescueTime records your activity so it works automatically on weekends, for instance. Timesheet Work Time Tracker

Additional Capabilities

Much of the value you get from RescueTime comes from that which You make of this information and how you use that information to influence your behavior. Changing behavior is tough, but getting rich insights does not need to be.

Among the manners RescueTime makes it easy to understand how To interpret all of the data that it collects is using a Productivity Pulse score. This daily score, shown as a percentage, comes in calculating the percent of time spent very productive, effective, neutral, unproductive, and very wasteful jobs. To be clear, no one is advocating you target for a 100 percent Productivity Pulse score.

A RescueTime blog article explaining the productivity Score notes that the typical score is 67 percent, and the on site average is 79 percent. Most people want to do some job that is not considered”very productive” during daily. The entire point of using RescueTime will be to help you work out how to focus on productive and very productive tasks when you will need to and possibly save less productive tasks for times as soon as your ability to concentrate has been waning anyway.

Jobs are not exactly the Exact Same thing as distractions. RescueTime has a simple and smart feature for controlling unwanted behavior, such as getting sucked into websites . A feature named FocusTime, when enabled, blocks your ability to access. It customization and requires a little setup, but it’s quite powerful once it’s ready to deploy. As an example, let’s say you want to finish a record, and to make progress on it, you need to focus hardcore for the next 30 minutes. It may block you from looking at email, posting on Twitter, checking sports scores, or other sites and actions, and switch on FocusTime you deem deflecting.

The RescueTime mobile program has Silence your phone you enable FocusTime. Likewise, you may set up other automation with the support of third-party providers IFTTTFree at iTunes Store and Zapier to block or silence other distractions. By way of example, you can make a rule with IFTTT (it stands for”if this, then that”) that says,”If I enable FocusTime, then mechanically set my Slack standing to active.”

RescueTime also Provides you the Choice Idle moment. Whenever RescueTime notices the computer was idle for several minutes in a row, so it pops up a dialogue asking if you’re at a meeting, on the phone, taking break, etc, and lets you categorize the idle time accordingly.

Advantages of RescueTime

Here is a Number of the advantages of utilizing RescueTime Over solutions. Timesheet Work Time Tracker

Feature Set

At its core, RescueTime does something — track time. If you look at it that way, it is not super unique. Technically, you can do that with a spreadsheet or some of the dozens of programs on the internet.

However, RescueTime’s attribute set How it tracks time and exactly what it does with all the data (aka, you you’ll actually use).

RescueTime watches which windows now have Activity, looks at the window title, and instances the activity in this window. It’s always running in the background — always watching.

Unobtrustive makes RescueTime worthwhile. There’s not any friction or hurdle to monitoring time.

Since RescueTime’s tracking feature simplifies that Problem, you’ll have data that is complete, useful & appropriate.

RescueTime’s other features focus on making their Core attribute better. They do not attempt to include on features that are complementary like time-tracking &amp; billing. They do not attempt to get into any side businesses.

They do have Feature in an intriguing manner. For example, the Get Focused! From running when chosen feature blocks programs.

They have alerts and aims that Permit You to pick What you want to happen when X occurs — and RescueTime can do that based on which it is tracking.

I also love RescueTime does Offline Time Tracking. Rather than having to search and put in it in 100% manually, then you pick a time period that’s unlogged and fill in the blank.

You can even customize the buttons to make logging Offline time quick and simple.

It’s a minimalist feature set — but that’s exactly Making it great. It’s well-done, straightforward and easy.

Pricing and Plans

RescueTime provides two tiers of support: Lite (free) and Premium ($9 per month or $72 per year). Firms or organizations that are looking to use RescueTime across a group of people pay the same speed as Premium subscribers.

RescueTime Lite offers Monitored her or his time. The program monitors which sites and programs you use, and how much time spent on or in every one of them. You may categorize each app and site you are using on a Productive/Unproductive scale, and RescueTime creates a couple of basic reports demonstrating the best way to spend your own time. Lite members can set weekly objectives, such as”spend hours each week on productive jobs and fewer than Y minutes on unproductive products.” It’s possible to find a report email to you. For reports, you’re confined to some three-month history.

Subscribers get everything in the free Lite program, Plus extra features and reports, such as an history. Premium comes with alarms you can enable for if you reach on daily goals. You can more correctly log time spent away from the computer, noting whether you were in a meeting, on a phone call, or simply out to dinner. Additionally, there is a Get Focused option, which lets you block websites that are distracting for a time period you set. Timesheet Work Time Tracker

Assessing RescueTime’s cost to that of other programs Needs an open mind because apps do precisely what RescueTime does. Qbserve is one and it charges a level fee of $40.

We can look at more Apps for freelancers that include tools for generating bills. HarvestFree at Harvest is a decent example. At $12 per individual per month for Premium, it costs over RescueTime, but it’s a very clear return on investment because it helps to ensure more accurate charging. How you’ll interpret RescueTime’s reports and make better use of your time as a result is not as clear.

Toggl Popular among freelancers, costs $9 per month, and it also gives you definite tools for monitoring time spent on jobs with billing clients’ usual end aim. It has several integration options for connecting with other invoicing services, although toggl does not include its own invoicing tools.

A Couple of programs are nearer to RescueTime in what they have to Provide, such as Slife, although they have a tendency to have fewer attributes even if they are free (and Slife is).

Either way — RescueTime is a no-brainer pricing-wise. It’s free to use.

And when you are saved by the features just 1 hour each month it is paid for itself even if you are earning US minimum wage.

RescueTime is an investment that makes sense.

App Quality

A common problem with tracking programs of all kinds is That they constantly have to be on. The”always on” feature can cause performance issues on laptops &amp; desktop computers. It can cause battery issues on mobile devices.

But in my own experience, RescueTime causes neither. It is running from startup on my Macbook Pro, my Windows PC, and my Nexus 5x phone. I have never monitored any battery life or performance issues to the app.

It’s lightweight and well-built.

I like the fact that the app does not demand Dozens of absurd permissions. It demands access but does not try to track location, emails, contacts, or any of those privacy violating other programs that are permissions ask for.

It is quick to set up and syncs using an internet dashboard. It pulls in data from all sources and crunches on the data if you’re on the Premium plan or from next day on the program.

Reporting

What’s the point of information if it can’t be interpreted by you ? Timesheet Work Time Tracker

RescueTime’s reports solves that problem — and in Many ways is the point of using the app over a spreadsheet.

RescueTime’s Dashboard uses vibrant bar charts and Pie charts to reveal just what you are (and are not) doing.

You can Choose to receive emails reports every day, Week or month.

And best of all, you can dig deep into the Reporting with various filters and overlays to find out your customs.

It’s really eye-opening to see that the amount of Time that each job happens.

When I working for a marketing agency in Atlanta — The time tracked to Instant Messages and Gchats was astounding. It altered processes not only for me, but also my job supervisors.

Now I’m on my own with no fulltime workers — I will see the time that I devote to jobs that matter. I am able to construct around those.

And just to reiterate Built-in into the software. The Dashboard is on my default — as well as reports are pre-built.

It’s all powerful, seamless and fast so that you When analyzing your time are wasting time.

Integrations

Among the key selling points of RescueTime is their feature set minimalism. They do something and they do it nicely.

That said — many all people using their merchandise Have time-based applications needs. When it’s project management, charging, staff time monitoring or something your own time demands don’t cease with measuring tracking and categorization.

To solve that problem, RescueTime’s applications Integrates with a massive assortment. They’ve an open API and guide integrations with software that is shared.

Whether you are Time monitoring into invoicing applications like FreshBooks or even a job manager that needs to collate staff member’s time, RescueTime will probably integrate with this.

Cons of RescueTime

Like any software RescueTime is Nor is it the ideal fit for everyone. Here’s some pitfalls that I’ve noticed over the years. Timesheet Work Time Tracker

Default Get Focused! Groups

In general, RescueTime’s classes are pretty good. Sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter are”Very Distracting”…for most people. And for tracking, RescueTime’s classes are quick &amp; simple to repair.

But RescueTime’s categories News, sites and research sites’ subdomains.

I can not use the Get Focused! Performance for any Task which needs research (aka visiting a bunch of different sites ).

The time that I need smart blocking Functionality is when I am doing research for a post

There is a fine line between this really is effective and When I’m researching This really is distracting. It would be good to use RescueTime, but the classes aren’t accurate enough for it to operate.

The Main problem is the Block Sites function Is unavailable in reverse (ie, add specific sites to block). I can add websites to unblock.